


and this wasteland is my land

by rohesia



Series: just a different kind of wasteland [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dissociation, M/M, Missing Scene, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Set between 6x06 and 6x07, Theo Raeken-centric, anger issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25484794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohesia/pseuds/rohesia
Summary: “I’m not opening the mouth of hell in my bathroom, you fucking moron”.Or, Theo deals, badly, with his new-found freedom.
Relationships: Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken
Series: just a different kind of wasteland [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853710
Comments: 22
Kudos: 115





	and this wasteland is my land

**Author's Note:**

> At some point through my rewatch of season 6 I asked myself: so what the hell happened between the pack deciding to go check out the trasformer and Liam and Hayden dragging Theo throught the preserve? And how did Theo actually deal with being back from hell in those first few hours and with Liam being the one who brought him back? So I stayed up all night trying to figure it out and that's what I came up with.
> 
> Warning: Theo deals - or doesn't - with his anger in a way he doesn't expect he needs to.
> 
> Title from Empire by Thomas North.

i.

Tara’s fingers have just begun clawing their way into his chest, deliberately slowly, when Theo feels his eyes open (even though technically he never closed them) and darkness engulfs him, adrenaline streaming through his veins, sudden and overwhelming, making his heart beat in his chest like a drum. His mouth fills with fangs and the shift takes over when his brain can’t make sense of what’s happening. 

This is new. He hasn’t been able to control the shift for… years? Seconds? And now it rips through him like a cannonball. Time stopped making sense the moment he woke up in the morgue. But this isn’t the morgue. So this is either a trick, some new form of torture meant to confuse him, or… He doesn’t let himself think about the alternative and just plays this new game, whatever it might be. 

And then he’s slamming Liam Dunbar against a wall, hands buried in his shirt, swiftly replaced by his forearms coming up to press against his throat. The name comes back to him like something long-forgotten, memories all muddied and rushing out in the wrong order, but it’s enough to make him snarl and tighten his hold. 

He starts, if for a moment, when the memory of warmth and life is re-ignited violently by the heat radiating from Liam’s skin. Suddenly it’s all he can feel - heat and the slightest hint of barely suppressed anger - and  _ it doesn’t make any sense. _

ii.

Anger is new. He’s known nothing but fear and despair for what feels like a lifetime - a lifetime compressed into an endless, barely-a-minute-long, loop. Tara is never angry, he thinks, waiting for her to finally make her entrance. Just unwavering and methodical. Not angry, not cruel, not vengeful. It isn’t Tara at all, just something wearing her face. 

The point isn’t to remind him of his humanity, even if through torture. The point is edging the boundaries of oblivion without being allowed to tip over, constantly hanging on to a distorted, haunting memory. So when he breathes in Liam’s anger (and it’s so human he almost  _ chokes  _ on it) his brain warns him of the danger. It’s a trick. 

iii.

Except it’s not. At least not the kind of trick Theo had been expecting. He ends up being electrocuted, almost sent back to his sister, repeatedly punched in the face by Malia to the point he passes out, threatened again multiple times, and then manages to talk his way into staying and helping the McCall pack catch a Ghost Rider, because why the fuck not. 

Oh, he’s not even going to mention the fuckin nazi. To anyone. Let alone  _ himself _ . That problem he can leave to somebody else, he’s going to be gone before he can actually suffer the repercussions of his deliberate negligence. The only relief is the brief shower he’d been oh so kindly allowed to take while Liam and Hayden had kept discussing the terms of his  _ temporary  _ release, before Scott’s return.

They decide to leave in the morning and get a few hours of sleep before the storm, something they all begrudgingly agree on if the sudden scent of frustration and distress is anything to go by. Theo decides he doesn’t give a shit and makes for the door.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Liam asks, Kira’s sword in his hand, held like some kind of toy he doesn’t really know how to use. Except he really doesn’t have to use it, just plant it into the ground and let the magic - Tara - do the rest. 

It doesn’t look all that threatening, the beast inside him dumbly suggests, rising from within and numbing him to the danger, but he’s smarter than that. 

“I told you where to find the transformer, what else do you need me around for?” Theo says, hand still on the handle and eyes fixed on the door. He hears Liam scoff and smells Malia’s homicidal fury, the blue of her eyes reverberating on the glass panel of the McCall’s house back door. 

“You could be making it all up for all we know. You’re taking us to the doctor’s lair in the morning and then,” he says, making sure to look at the others before he continues, like he wants to underline how all of Theo’s attempts at taking off would be met with immediate resistance, a point he further emphasizes by loudly resting the sword’s tip to the ground, probably damaging Ms McCall’s floor if he interprets Scott’s sudden intake of breath correctly 

“... shit, sorry…” 

“‘t’s okay”. 

“... _ then _ ,” Liam resumes, “you’re staying here until we figure out how to get Stiles back. For some reason whatever the Ghost Riders are doing isn’t affecting you, so… forget it, there’s no way you’re leaving”.

Theo loses control of his shift for a few seconds, baring his teeth on a snarl that he feels vibrating in his throat and on his tongue more than hear, since his ears are filled with the sound of his blood  _ boiling _ . It makes it look deliberate, or he hopes he does. It’s over almost immediately, annoyance and the need to be annoying replacing fury. 

“Alright, King Arthur, whatever you say”.

When he turns around, Liam’s hard stare, zeroing in on him, makes him feel more real than he’s felt in months, and he has to look away again.

iv.

“You’re not sleeping in the guest room,” Liam tells him, as he retrieves a sleeping bag buried under a ridiculous amount of lacrosse jerseys. The “ _ I’m not letting you out of my sight _ ” is implied. 

“Wasn’t expecting to be treated as a guest,” Theo shoots back, more to make himself as annoying as possible than to make a point. 

He hears Liam’s throat tighten at the comment as he swallows bile and poison, his scent spiking and his hands straining around the sleeping bag. No claws though, which is a surprise, considering. 

“The floor is good, I’m not getting in that thing,” and this time he’s not trying to be contrary or annoying, even though he injects his tone with as much pettiness as possible. 

The house feels claustrophobic enough, and not just because Liam’s parents are apparently out for the night - maybe not like the morgue or his own mind or the McCall house, but the thought of giving up what little freedom of movement he gained isn’t a pleasant one. 

“Suit yourself,” Liam says, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, without letting the silence take over yet. “You okay sleeping in your clothes or…?”. 

“Thanks, but no thanks, I’m not risking you using that sword because I stretched out your clothes”. 

Liam punches him. Hard.

v.

Theo hasn’t really slept in weeks - months? - and the idea feels foreign to him. Defining his time spent in the skinwalkers’ prison as eternal sleep or death or any other variation on the theme would be a flat-out lie, one not even Theo could come up with on his best - or worst - moments. 

Sleep would have been a goddamn relief, even if riddled with nightmares and terrors, but the whole point of his being dragged to hell by her dead (murdered, heartless) sister had been exactly that: denying him relief, trapping him in a world where he had no moves to make, no pawns to sacrifice, no time to strategize, no way out, no solace, no rest. 

It hadn't been a real place and the real world’s rules handn't applied. There weren’t rules, really, except one: he couldn’t get out, he could only wake up and do it all over again,  _ ad nauseam.  _ His mind had been stripped, reduced to a precise, limited set of inputs and outputs: fear, panic, confusion, pure terror, the instinct to run and find a way out, the infinitesimal - but lethal - droplet of  _ hope _ , enough to make it hurt, to make it real (the wrong kind of real), to make it matter, to trick his brain into believing the doors would open, eventually. 

Then, the first time he’d told his body to stop running, hope had made place for something else, rising from his stomach to his throat and spreading out on his tongue like bile: resignation and acceptance, he’d thought at first, feeling Tara’s hands digging into his chest, the urge to run and the need to make it stop suppressed. 

But hell isn’t about repentance, he thinks, while Liam hands him a pillow and a blanket. 

Hell had only been supposed to remind him repentance is like that droplet of hope that had incessantly bloomed in his chest, even in the face of impossible odds:  _ useless _ . Not unachievable: he could repent, he’d probably started to feel it crawl its way into his veins.  _ It’s okay, you don’t have to stop _ . 

He doesn’t know how many times he’d let Tara rip his -  _ her  _ \- heart out, how many times he’d stood there looking at her, whispering _ sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, _ he just knows it hadn’t really mattered. At all. He just knows he’d wanted it to, more than anything, so he’d let her. 

vi.

Neither of them close their eyes for the longest time. Theo can feel Liam fight against continual bouts of anxiety and fear and exhaustion, which in turn makes Theo annoyed and tired, like the entire situation isn’t already maddening. 

“You could have left me at Scott’s, you know,” Theo says, loudly, and lets his grin deliver the rest of the message ‘ _ since you can’t handle it _ ’. Liam stops breathing, startled, for a moment, hands curling into fists. He keeps staring at the ceiling as he replies.

“Bringing you back was my call. And I’m not letting Ms McCall come face to face with her son’s murderer, _ in her own house, _ if I can help it,” the last part he spits, making sure to look at Theo in the eye as he does. Which almost stings. 

Theo ignores the bait, looking for something else, circling the waters of Liam’s mind (perfectly displayed in his eyes), like a shark, hungry for blood. Like he can’t stand the stillness. The image stirs something in him, but he can’t be bothered to examine it further, even as it urgently knocks on that now atrophied part of his brain that, if he remembers correctly, houses rational thought. 

“So you’re just assuming I’m not going to try anything.  _ Smart _ ”.

Theo knows there isn’t an ounce of truth behind his words faster than Liam - hell, faster than the fucking walls - does, but it doesn’t stop him. He’s been so busy readjusting, his senses going crazy from the insane amount of information being thrown at them after months of nothing, getting his ass kicked, coming up with a plan to catch a Ghost Rider so as to buy more time to come up with  _ another plan  _ to get the hell away from Beacon Hills and that damn sword, that he’s completely overlooked the most important thing. Which eludes him, because his brain isn’t working the way it’s supposed to.

“You keep talking and I’m going to fucking wish you would,” Liam mutters.

Theo remembers why that time, months ago, he’d said “I love this kid”. He pushes the thought away, amusement and something close to appreciation erasing his sneer anyway. If he didn’t suspect Liam would simply drag him back to hell, he’d risk making him real mad to get a fight out of it. He’s itching for it, literally, and he can feel the shift trying to take over again, for the third or fourth time in the last few hours, which should be worrying considering control has never been a problem for him. 

Anger is Liam’s fatal flaw, not his, but ironically Liam has been controlling himself so well not even his eyes flare. Either he’s been working hard at it in the last few months or the weight of his new responsibility must be overpowering even his worst instincts. 

He dwells on the thought long enough his eyes start drifting close, heavy in a way he had forgotten, like a lot of other things. And then he fully realizes it:

Liam brought him back. Which.  _ Obviously _ . He was there. Except he wasn’t, was he. 

“Where’s the bathroom?”

vii.

Liam doesn’t follow him inside the bathroom, doesn’t even stand guard behind the door, which Theo thinks is either really stupid on his part or exceptionally insightful, because the moment he closes the door behind himself (idiot doesn’t even tell him not to lock it) panic rises in his throat and claws at it and he can’t breathe. 

He braces himself against the sink, one hand on either side, chest heaving and breath coming out in irregular gasps. His reflection in the mirror doesn’t offer him anything other than his own face distorted by terror. 

He shuts his eyes closed when he feels the shift overcoming him and when he opens them again he’s back in the morgue, or some other place he can’t escape, the illusion finally fading away. The sounds of Tara’s steps, already outside, calms him for a second, then sparks rage in his veins hot enough to burn away any residual fragment of doubt. 

He can’t let himself be fooled like that again.

When he kicks the door open, unhinging it, Liam is in front of him, blue eyes turning bright yellow, matching Theo’s ones, a roar erupting from his throat. 

Theo is only slightly faster, but Liam is stronger, so when Theo manages to grab him by his shirt, claws digging in his chest and leaving the intoxicating smell of blood in the air, the only thing that allows him to actually get the better of him is the surprise slowing Liam’s movements, instinct not yet kicking in. 

Theo has him against a wall -  _ again _ , a new loop, he thinks, and gets angrier. But so does Liam, roaring and pushing against Theo’s hands as hard as he can, until their positions are reversed, but only for a moment. Theo trips him at the last second, before his back can hit the wall, one leg hooking around Liam’s left one, right behind his knee, and they both hit the ground, Liam’s head violently enough Theo thinks he hears it crack.  _ Good _ . 

He can deal with this kind of hell, at least he can fight back. At least it feels real enough he can  _ relish  _ it. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Liam screams, grabbing Theo by the shoulders and trying to get him off himself, unsuccessfully. Theo’s hands move before a full strategy can take shape in his mind, pure instinct setting his blood on fire, and he traps Liam’s wrists, holding them firmly over his head. The question doesn’t even reach him.

Liam kicks at him, then, once, twice, his knees shooting up and hitting randomly, and when that doesn’t work he headbutts him hard enough Theo can hear  _ both  _ their heads crack. A moment later, hands finally free, Liam gets on his feet and Theo feels his fingers, claws and all, close in a vicious vice around his shoulder. Then he’s flying into the wall again - no, he’s flying into the sink through the bathroom’s entrance - except Liam doesn’t follow him. 

Theo sees him running towards another door - it opens, in the other loop they never had, or maybe they had never opened for  _ him  _ \- and he disappears through it, only to reappear a second later holding a sword. 

His expression isn’t calm or steadfast like Tara’s had been. He’s scared, Theo realizes through the haze. His blood sings and his heart roars. 

“I swear to God, I’m sending you back if you won’t calm down!” Liam shouts, and  _ it doesn’t make sense.  _

Back where? To Tara? Theo snarls, a delirious grin turning his face into a grotesque mask - he can feel his feature morphing into something different, something he can’t control and that doesn’t have anything to do with the shift. He feels control abandoning him like never before, and the bitter taste of high desperation in his mouth. This isn’t him. This is hell worming its way into his body and taking the reins. 

This is hell erasing him.

It’s terrifying. It’s worse than Kira’s sword - that’s Kira’s sword, isn’t it? And that’s Liam Dunbar holding it. That’s Liam, and Theo is going to kill him or get himself thrown back into hell if he doesn’t get it together. 

So he does. He reaches back to that part of his brain that’s been screaming at him for the last few minutes, the cold, analytical, lucid part the Doctors had designed exactly to avoid this kind of thing - ironically - and he does. 

His manic smile turns into a self-depracating grin and then a straight line, his eyes regain their human bluish shade and his body slumps, strength leaving him as exhaustion slams into him like a freight-train. He lets himself fall and slide down against the wall, but he’s not ready to lose consciousness just yet, tempting as it may be. He doesn’t trust his body to just align with his mind and not go berserk again.

Then, suddenly, Liam is kneeling in front of him, something akin to concern, possibly distrust mixed with residual panic, lining his features. Blue eyes, startling traces of gold lingering, look him over, searching for any sign of danger or deceit. Theo feels real again, but he can’t look away this time. He needs to feel it as much as he needs Liam to believe it. He’s real. This is real. And if he’s fooling himself again then he doesn’t care.

“If you’re going to stab that thing into the floor, do it already,” Theo says, or whispers mostly, his strengths steadily abandoning him. Fuck, he doesn’t want to pass out. 

“I’m not opening the mouth of hell in my bathroom, you fucking moron”.

Theo snorts. He’s glad he’s so tired he feels close to death or he could flat out laugh. He’s also glad Liam seems to catch up and instead of simply letting him pass out on the floor like an idiot, he helps him up, looping one of Theo’s arms around his shoulders, and slowly drags him towards his room, only to go past it and shouldering open the next door. 

Theo doesn’t have the time to question it. He’s being pushed, not unkindly he barely registers, on something far softer and warm than the floor. 

“What…?” he starts.

“You look half dead, I doubt you could _ try anything  _ if you wanted”.

Theo manages one last grin before sleep claims him. And he’s in the dark.

viii.

When Theo wakes up, Liam is sitting on the bed, leaning over him like a creep and… handcuffing him, the rough bite of steel around Theo’s wrists jolting him awake. He stares for one long second - he knows Liam can feel him stare, can see it from the line of his shoulders going rigid, his hands moving less carefully and his lips quivering. He stares for another long second, barely managing to make sense of the situation. He’s pretty sure he’s gaping.

Then “What. The fuck. Are you doing?” Theo asks, calmly. Liam doesn’t look up, but a grin forms on his lips as he yanks at the handcuffs to make sure they hold. Once he’s satisfied he stands up and then yanks harder, a long chain Theo only now notices wrapping around his hand, and pulls Theo up from the mattress, giving him whiplash. 

“ _ Again _ . What the fuck are you doing?!”

Liam gives him a smile that is both amused and threatening. 

“Making sure you don’t maul anyone or steal a car before holding up to your end of the deal,” he says, and yanks the chain again. Theo is prepared this time, so he yanks back and Liam almost falls back onto the bed, his right knee and hand preventing him. 

“Then I can maul you?” Theo hisses, no amusement and no threat either in his tone. 

Liam must sense it because, “You can try,” he says, as he straightens back up, a winning smile lighting up his face. If Theo was a reasonable person he’d think ‘ _ Yeah okay I deserved that _ ’, but he just isn’t, so. 

Theo just wants to drop back onto the mattress, feels himself giving in to inertia, except Liam is holding him up and he only manages to go down a few inches, steel biting harder into his skin. This is ridiculous.

“I could easily break free,” he threatens, holding up his hands and making the chains rattle. He couldn’t. He’s so fucking tired he couldn’t break out of those chains if they where made of cotton wool. Liam seems to sense that as well, because he snorts.

It’s going to be a long fucking day, isn’t it.

ix.

Liam seems to acknowledge his mistake when Theo’s glass of orange juice shatters on the floor after he drops it, chains getting in the way. Theo lets him believe it, at least, because he could have easily drunk that no problem, but he’s not going to make it easy for Liam when Liam seems hell-bent on making it harder for him.

He holds still when Liam frees only one of his wrists - “These are coming back up don’t kid yourself” - and rolls his eyes dramatically, dropping his free hand on the kitchen counter. The other he yanks free from Liam’s stupid hands.

“You already destroyed my bathroom,” Liam starts, his tone already laced with something dangerous that Theo, were it not for last night's events, would drink up and ride like a wave. But he doesn’t need or want a repeat, so he calms down, lets his atrophied rational mind out of its stupor and lets it familiarize itself with the real world once again.

“Like mommy and daddy can’t pay for it,” Theo taunts, going for a new glass of orange juice.

He can’t say he doesn’t expect it when Liam’s hand connects, hard, with the back of his head. But he makes sure he spits out blood, juice and pieces of glass both on the kitchen counter and on the kitchen floor, because he’s nothing but meticulous. 

He’s expecting to get a vicious satisfaction out of it, but then Liam’s loud laughter fills the kitchen and whatever had been starting to form in Theo’s chest is killed dead instantly, only to be replaced by something more complicated, nameless. Not lighter, if anything it weighs on the back of his neck like an ax, kissing his skin like a promise he’s not sure he wants to keep.

Theo, thankfully, doesn’t have the time to dwell on it any longer, because Liam’s scent sours, sadness joining the mix, and he stops laughing almost abruptly, like a video being put on hold suddenly. 

“I guess they will,” he says, his eyes doing a weird dance, unsure where to rest, “at least when I get them back from the Hunt”. Then his jaw sets and his eyes land on Theo’s hands.

Theo feels the cuts in his mouth heal, but the taste of blood lingers.

x.

They wait for Hayden by Liam’s parents’ car, Theo’s handcuffs back on. Liam seems to acknowledge his mistake  _ again  _ when the postman passes them with a scoff, muttering something about online communities and weirdos traumatizing children. 

Liam stares directly into the rising sun like it could burn the last few hours from his brain, then, an unexpected non sequitur, he asks:

“So, what happened last night?”

Theo freezes and remains silent, ignores it when Liam tries to bore a hole into his face by staring at him and then pulls at the chains to make sure he’s even heard the question. 

“That didn’t look like ordinary homicidal rage,” Liam continues, because he doesn’t know what’s good for him. 

“And what did it look like?” Theo shoots back, because he doesn’t know what’s good for him either. 

This time it’s Liam who remains silent. 

Liam who brought him back. Liam who stuck a sword into the ground and freed him from hell. The chain he's holding, still wrapped around his hand, conveys a completely different message, but even as steel burns against his skin, soreness and bruises healing away as fast as they start blooming, Theo can’t say he feels trapped. He would, if he hadn’t spent the last few weeks (months? Shit, he needs to ask what fucking day it is) trapped in his own personal hell, getting his heart ripped out repeatedly with hands that had felt like butter knives.

So whatever resentment he may feel against Liam, it heals away like his bruises and lets him choke on his own tongue every time he tries to express it. And the ridiculous, confusing tangle of feelings that has taken residence in his stomach makes him dizzy and nauseous as it fights its way up his throat. 

The thing is, Theo doesn’t want to know what gratitude tastes like, so he swallows it back down and lets it simmer down there, hoping if he waits long enough it’s going to turn into hate and contempt and coldness. Into a wasteland.

But when he closes his eyes, feeling Hayden’s steps approaching and Liam moving to meet her (fast, like he wants to escape his own curiosity), Theo is forced to move after him, their shoulders bumping together, and warmth and life hit him all over again, a vicious, delicate reminder branding itself on his skin, even through layers of clothes. 

He can only distantly hear Tara sing-songing his name, but he doesn’t follow it.

He follows Liam and Hayden instead.

**Author's Note:**

> Btw, I kind of made up Liam's parents being taken by the Hunt. I thought Liam, being a dumbass, wouldn't want to burden Scott with that as well, so he keeps it to himself and doesn't deal with it like a normal person. That's it. Kudos, bookmarks or comments are all appreciated <3


End file.
